Borders House: February 2009

This is a blog that will record our move from Kent to the Scottish Borders. When Karen's job relocated to Edinburgh one of the big decisions was where to move to with our 7 dogs. We wanted a position near the country but within a commutable distance to Edinburgh and as I wasn't totally sold on a move to Scotland the deal was that I would agree to the move if I could build my own house! And so this journey began.

We started looking in April 2008 and found this plot almost straight away. It was part of a larger plot that had been split in 2 and one half of the plot had a house already built on it with foundations in place on the other half. As the housing market was in decline the builder decided not to build the second house and offered the plot complete with foundations.

We looked around at several plots but they either weren't in the right location, weren't right for the dogs, didn't have planning permission for the sort of house we wanted or were too expensive. Whilst this plot isn't perfect (it's near to the East Coast mainline) it offered us more than others we had seen in our price range.

We had thought that buying a plot as opposed to a house would be easy but in reality there were all sorts of different issues to deal with such as transferring the building warrant, getting the foundations signed off by a structural engineer, checking on the planning permission and getting access agreed for the 2 plots.

Eventually the sale went through and we became the owners in February 2009. This is our first attempt at a self build so I'm sure there will be many challenges along the way! Our budget for the build is 220k and we hope to keep within budget as far as possible as we have no more money until the Kent house sells (which is turning out to be a long haul).

The photos show the sea views from the front of the plot, the field in front of the house and a view of the house already built (ours will be similar) from the field opposite.